Advanced Abilities/Giftedness and the modular psychopedagogy: evaluating potentialities

Abstract

The modular psychopedagogy is a proposal that presents a model of dynamic assessment; it is an interactive, flexible and individualized process, which attempts to understand the functionality of intelligent systems. This research, conducted with children seeking psycho-pedagogical evaluation at the Center for Practical Psychology at PUC-PR, intended to point out the functionality of intelligent systems, identifying the existence or not of advanced skills, and to identify the prevalence among analytic, practical or creative systems used by the clients in question. The evaluation methodology included the following instruments: modular evolutionary interview; questionnaire for parents; family history; E.M.C.A; WISC III; multimodal and modular cognitive tests. This process took approximately 25 meetings of 50 minutes each. Twenty-eight students between 8 and 17 years old, from several Curitiba (Brazil) schools, participated in the survey. From the obtained data, albeit from a small sample, it is concluded that the proposed Modular Psychopedagogy, with its dynamic evaluation model, favored the identification of advanced ability/gifted individuals in its specificity, i.e. considering the multiplicity of intelligent systems and skills involved in the mental processes that underlie the analytical, creative and practical intelligences. The modular vision in the process brings an identity to the gifted, taking them out of the general conception.